Prometheus Illbound

By André Gide

Written by the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, André Gide, this French novel delved back into the concept that Gide popularized as 'act gratuit' or actions that defy conventional explanation. In this book, his main character, Zeus, begins his story by putting 500 francs into an envelope before he sets out to hand it over to another person.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Jun 3, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547056577

André Gide

André Gide (1869 - 1951) was a French author described by The New York Times as, “French’s greatest contemporary man of letters.” Gide was a prolific writer with over fifty books published in his sixty-year career with his notable books including The Notebooks of André Walker (1891), The Immoralist (1902), The Pastoral Symphony (1919), The Counterfeiters (1925) and The Journals of André Gide (1950). He was also known for his openness surrounding his sexuality: a self-proclaimed pederast, Gide espoused the philosophy of completely owning one’s sexual nature without compromising one’s personal values which is made evident in almost all of his autobiographical works. At a time when it was not common for authors to openly address homosexual themes or include homosexual characters, Gide strove to challenge convention and portray his life, and the life of gay people, as authentically as possible.

Book preview

André Gide

Prometheus Illbound

EAN 8596547056577

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

PREFACE

A CHRONICLE OF PRIVATE MORALITY

I

II

III

IV

V

THE IMPRISONMENT OF PROMETHEUS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

THE ILLNESS OF DAMOCLES

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

EPILOGUE

PREFACE

Table of Contents

The

work of art is the exaggeration of an idea, says Gide in the epilogue of the Prometheus Illbound. This is really the explanation of the whole book and of many other books of Gide.

His world is a world of abstract ideas, under the action of which most of his characters move as marionettes. Time and space are the boards, which, with the help of our minds, have been set up by the innumerable truths of the universe as a stage for their own performances. And there we play our parts like determined, convinced, devoted and voluptuous marionettes.

That is the reason why there is a determinist atmosphere in his books and that even the disinterested act appears as the reaction of the mind on its own concept. Zeus, the banker, poses this disinterested act because his thought refuses or hesitates to admit it; the same thing happens with Lafcadio in the Caves du Vatican when he is on the point of murdering Amédée Fleurissoire.

The tyranny of ideas is the dominating force of his characters. Even his first writings—where one finds some of his best pages, which appear to be purely lyrical explosion—such as Les Nourritures Terrestres and Le Voyage d’Urien, are really the songs of a mind which leads its life by the concept of eternal desire and detachment—a mind very near that of Nietzsche.

It is because of that tyranny of ideas that Gide is attracted by religious psychology. After all, Alissa of La Porte Étroite sacrifices her life and her happiness to her ideas. It is because of that also that one of the most daring books of the time, L’Immoraliste, is written in the most moral way: the feelings are only described by their reaction on the brain. And this applies to nearly the whole work of Gide.

Even his concept of heroism is ruled by it. His heroes are monomaniacs of a thought which they believe or create ideal. His Roi Candaule is a man stupefied by the idea of his possessions.

That which does not nourish his brain is a reason for depression, and as love or passion absorbs the brain without nourishing it, he resents it. Every attempt of a purely amorous adventure is a failure, as well in L’Immoraliste as in the Tentative Amoureuse.

On the contrary, when it becomes by struggle a problem for the brain it excites him. Alissa was really his only love, and he could not love Isabelle when she had lost her power of attraction through the revelation of the unknown she represented to his mind.

The exaltation of Gide is a Nietzschean exaltation—it is an exaltation caused by the power of mind.

The definition of genius he gives in Prétextes is very characteristic from that point of view. He calls it: Le sentiment de la ressource.

His sensitiveness is the sensitiveness of the brain, which is so acute that it vibrates through his whole personality. From there comes the clear, logical form of his tales.

The book, Prometheus Illbound, which we present to the English public to-day is one of the most characteristic books of Gide: a work of pure intellectual fantasy, where the subtle brain of the author has full play. It is the expression of the humorous side of a mind which must be ranked among the greatest of the world’s literature.

LILIAN ROTHERMERE.

---

PROMETHEUS

ILLBOUND

Eagle, vulture or dove.

Victor Hugo.

---

In

the month of May 189..., at two o’clock in the afternoon, this occurred which might appear strange:

On the